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Membership Learning Moment
Maximizing the Value of Your AAOE Membership
Maximizing the Value of Your AAOE Membership
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Hi, my name is Justin McGuire. I am a two-year member of AAOE, but this is actually my first conference of being able to attend. So, I'm also new to the conference, but wanted to try to add some kind of perspective as a new member or as a new attendee, kind of what benefits I've seen already from collaborating some other things. And that's really it. I'm the easy one. Good afternoon. My name is Rochelle Gladden. I am the patient access director at Midlands Orthopedics and Neurosurgery in Columbia, South Carolina. I have been a member of AAOE, I believe, for five years now. This is my third or fourth conference. I can't keep up. But I do look forward to sharing with you just the amazing things that AAOE has to offer and to make sure that you're maximizing your membership. And hello. I'm Lindsay Sullivan, and I'm the senior business development manager for Bone & Joint Institute of Tennessee in Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville. So I oversee business development, marketing, and physician relations and recruitment. And I'm excited to share some experience on AAOE. Oh, I've been a member for about five years, and this is my fourth conference. Sorry. So, this is a little bit more informal. We're going to kind of have some conversation. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to shoot up your hand and to ask. But first, I'm going to ask Justin, as the newest member of AAOE, what have you been able to take advantage of so far, and how has it helped you? Yeah, so I think the first really kind of interaction with it was from Collaborate. Are all of you familiar with the Collaborate platform? So Collaborate, through your membership, through the portal, going questions, asking other colleagues, your peers. For me specifically, somebody had posted something on there that was something that I had been thinking about in one of my clinics. And to see, one, the question, and I kind of paused and thought, well, I'll let other people answer and see what they all say. And luckily, somebody answered my question and I didn't have to do anything else. But I ended up reaching out to somebody who had actually posted something on there. And we've been communicating back and forth for almost a year now, completely different sides of the country, very similar practice models. I had questions for her based on some things that they do operational-wise, and she had questions for me and my team of kind of some management structure things and kind of how we do that. And we've worked together over several things in the past year, something that I don't think I ever probably would have met. And to clarify, I've not actually met her yet. She is here somewhere, and I will meet her eventually. You can find her in the app. What? I found her. I finally got her. She said she emailed me in December, and I never got it. So I figured she either quit or just spammed me, but she said it was in her drafts. So I have her number now, and we're going to chat while we're here. But between the Collaborate platform and some of the roundtable, virtual roundtable discussions, she was also on that. But learning a lot of good things about people that have similar issues to the issues we all have. Whether it's billing, nobody probably has any issues with billing or payments or anything like that. But if you did, it would be a good platform. Physical therapy to operations to PTO time, like what your HR policies are. We all think we're either doing it really well or we think that we're not doing something well and somebody else has figured out the gold mine for it. Sometimes that's the case. And sometimes we realize we're kind of all doing the same thing, just at a different capacity. So the Collaborate, you should, as a member, automatically have access to that. You should be getting it. So if you're not getting emails, you want to make sure you check with your IT vendor. A lot of things come from info at aoe.net. So if you have any questions, but you can also, when you go to the website and you're signed in, you can log in and you can check and there's membership benefits. And those are the different communities that you can respond to. So sometimes we have different Collaborates for, again, specific things. It might be RevCycle. We had one for COVID specifically. There's one that's generally for conference. They're all different platforms out there. And then you can research the archives too. So if you're looking for, I need to do a policy and procedure update and I need a manual or I need a specific policy, you can look at it and you can find people that have posted theirs on there already. It's great. Lindsey, you recently helped with developing the newly revised practice management course. Could you share more on the education opportunities that AOE provides? Absolutely. The, well, I mean, obviously everyone is here. So this is one of the main educational components of AAOE and just being able to build relationships and get the education that we all need. But there are a few others. The first one is practice management 101. It was put out just recently revised, what, a few months ago? Time's flying. So it could be six months ago. And it touches all of the basics. So my particular session was on marketing. There's one on like the front office and operations and touches kind of all different pieces. And they're not long, they're where you can view. So that is one way. And that's basically for the beginners in your office. It's for everyone. So it's not just like senior management that hears it and then, okay, here we go, we'll pass it along. It's for all employees in all different departments of your organization. The other one is also there's a casting, splitting soft goods course that is a virtual course as well. So that is something that can be accessed in the, through the AOE website. And so your clinical teams can have that extra education as well. Great. And has anyone done any of the educational courses yet on the AOE website? All right, I have done the 101. I'm also on the education council. So I did it just to go through and meet where I was. And then I have a new office manager who has done it as well, and it's been great. And we are looking forward to releasing a 201 and a 301 series for different levels. So it is great. And it goes through lots of different pieces. Again, as Lindsay mentioned, like there's customer service pieces in there. And so you have different facets of what it is, and it breaks it down in a way that is tangible for all your staff to understand. You don't have to have an MBA or an MHA to understand these. We're also going to be releasing a new learning portal soon. So it'll be like a single sign on, and it'll be really easy so you can really see these courses accessible. And there's things again on customer service. And we also, again, we value what membership has to offer. So if you have any ideas and you're like, I loved taking this 101 course and seeing it, I think I would be great to be a presenter or want to do a session, please make sure that you volunteer. And shout out, you always can just go to info at aoe.net and just say, hey, I'm interested to offer some of my expertise for these courses because we want to hear from you because you guys and ourselves, we are the best resources for each other. Anyone else have anything to add for our educational offerings? Rochelle, could you please share a little bit about how you take advantage of the membership and attending the AAOE annual conference? So who doesn't love a free vacation that's paid by your employer, right? Outside of that, I can say that being an AAOE member and attending the conferences, we provide relevant, I would say, sessions. You have group sessions. You have very empowered keynote speakings for you to take things back to your organizations to create, I would say, better and more efficient workflows, empowering your team members, boosting employee morale. The most important thing that I've taken back is becoming stronger as a leader, allowing those general sessions and the information, of course, applying those things. So taking that networking, that has been a key takeaway for me for conferences, building those strong and lasting friendships, strong and lasting relationships, those connections. So I encourage you strongly to take advantage of that. Stop by even to know more about AAOE and the membership council and even the new membership council will be at the beehive. Is it called the hive or the beehive? It's called the hive. So being able to connect with us, these vendors, of course, knowing what new products are offered that will allow you to have more efficient workflows that allow your team members to not be so overwhelmed, providing those, I would say, automatic systems. So I encourage you to not only stop by your vendors and signing up for those gifts and those prizes, I would say, but making sure that you're really learning about the products because it could be beneficial to your organizations. And I'll add to the relationship piece. This is the first year since I've been coming to AAOE that I'm flying solo for my practice just to various circumstances. But walking in, even to the welcome reception last night, I saw people that I haven't seen in a year. I've been communicating with throughout the year, like phone calls, emails and whatnot, but I feel like you just pick it back up and, hey, how you doing? What's going on here? So it's all about the relationship piece as well here, but then how that kind of flows out into once you get back into the trenches on Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever, you return to the office. Yeah. Pay attention to the badges. They are not just your names, they're color-coded. So if you have any questions, you can always refer back, but the color does represent something about you. So yellow are board members. So we're members that are here to speak for the membership. So you see anyone with a yellow badge on, please come talk to us. If you have a question, a suggestion, you want to volunteer, we can help you out. We've got purple, which are speakers and going through different things. We've got green, which are our new bees. So thank you. Thank you so much for coming. How many are here for the first time? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it can be very, very overwhelming. You've got the black, which are, again, are people who've been to more than one conference. Red are your vendors, our sponsors, things like that. So look at that and just don't be afraid to just go up to someone and say hi. I'm trying to walk up, any green badge I'm seeing, I'm trying to say hey, because it can be very scary, it can be very overwhelming. And I try to tell everybody, if you've never been to an AOE conference, it's unlike any other conference I've ever been to. Everyone is super friendly, they wanna engage with you, but it can be very overwhelming. You're gonna walk into that exhibit hall tonight and you're gonna lose your mind. It is intense, but don't be afraid. We rely on our vendors to help us be here. And like Rochelle said, go get the free prize. They've got a coffee mug on there, can I have that? They're gonna scan your badge, they're gonna email you. Don't be afraid to say, I'm not interested, but you may need that resource later. So I always have a vendor folder and I shuffle those people in there. Four years go down the line, I finally need that ROI. I'm at the release of information vendor. So now I'm gonna look at it, I've got it. So those are some key things. Anything else about conference that you would like to share? I know Jess, he was just asking if anyone else, I know I'm solo this year for the first time. So I know that as Lindsay was mentioning, this picking back up, as you saw, she came in, we're really excited about seeing one another, but having those, building those strong, lasting relationship. So if you are a first timer, we don't mind pairing with you. As they mentioned, it could be intimidating going to the vendors tables or sections. We don't mind, I'm solo. So I will pair with someone if you need someone to accompany you into the vendor exhibit halls. And there's some new, in the newbie area, there's some signups for dinner. I often joke, that's my hardest part of conferences, figuring out who I'm gonna go to dinner with. But I love it because sometimes there are big events and they've got a hundred people. Sometimes they're small and it's just like you and like one or two other people. And it's just nice to have an intimate conversation with somebody and it's nice. Also, some of the things you're gonna learn at conference are we had a session this morning and there's gonna be more about our benchmarking survey. You should have already received that in your email. The benchmarking survey is extremely important. And if you participate, you get the results free. And the more participation we have in the survey, the better it is. And what the benchmarking survey is, is it will take any information you can provide. You don't have to do it a hundred percent. People often are like, well, there's 40 tabs. I don't, I only know five tabs. We'll take those five tabs of information. It's about salary surveys. So, what part of the country are you from is important. What size practice you're from is very important. And then it will ask about like what your, how many employees you have. You know, your FD account with that, like who are full or part-time. Wages that those people make, the breakdown of what type of employee you have. Some, you know, even basic things like do your, do your surgeons get paid for call? So, things that you can use as an administrator to now have some, you know, negotiating power. You can bring it back for either yourself as an administrator and say, you know what? I feel like I'm being, you know, I'm undervalued. All the administrators in my area are making X, Y, and Z and I'm making this, you know, this is what I feel like I am worth. And, you know, a lot of people love data. The same thing with your physicians. They may be able to go to the hospital and use that as a bargaining tool and say, hey, the six hospitals around us are all getting paid for call, why are we not? So again, the more people we have participating in those benchmarking surveys, the better. And as the, you get some certain perks if it's your first time completing it or, you know, different things and the deadline is July. So, please make sure, and if you have any questions, yep, is that on the website? I believe it's on the website. You can go to registration and ask Vicky. Vicky Sprague is the head of the benchmarking survey. So, if you, again, looking for, she's a part of the AOE staff. She can give you that information and make sure, because again, we get hundreds of emails a day. Sometimes they, our IT just scans everything or sometimes we just delete it. So, but it's extremely valuable resource. And also one of the big benefits of AOE that I just recently got involved with is the advocacy council. People don't realize, but we are a national organization and we lobby with a company called LobbyIt, our partner with a company called LobbyIt that works with MGMA, AOS, some of the other organizations to bring up issues. And we have phone calls with senators and representatives or their staff. There's a Washington Hill Day where people from the advocacy council go and march on Washington in September. And anyone can get involved. I knew very little about it. And I was like, what? I was too intimidated to join it before. And I was, but I wanna learn more. And getting involved is the best way to learn. So if you wanna get involved and become more educated in what's available, volunteer and then see what we have. And if you wanna make a difference in healthcare, one voice can be magnified through this organization. Has anybody filled out the benchmarking survey before? So I know you help with the benchmarking and the data analytics. So it's very important we get more people in there. Cause again, people don't know about it, but most professional organizations have one, OrthoConnect, OrthoForum has one, MGMA has one. Ours is very important because it is ortho specific to our groups and our practices. So it's a great tool. But again, we need your data to help complete that. All right, let's see. Is there anything else that you think that you would want to share? Like one final piece of advice to someone who's looking to take more advantage of the AON e-membership in a more meaningful way? We'll start with you, Lindsay, just go down the line. I would say just don't be afraid to reach out to somebody. Use the membership, use the connections that you may hear. Give somebody your business card and don't be intimidated, especially being a first-time attendee. Don't be intimidated to walk up to somebody and say, hey, can we connect? Even if you connect on LinkedIn or send them an email, just so you have contact information. The relationships for me have been the biggest piece. And like I said, you may just touch base or see each other once a year and may not talk throughout the year, but you still have that relationship established and to where you can reach out and say, oh, you know what? I had a question on this. Please don't be afraid to reach out to anybody here. I would say for me, it's just knowing that you're not in it alone. Like Lindsay mentioned, excuse me, give me a new name. But knowing that you're not in it alone, that the challenges that you're facing at your organizations, there's someone else that is. And that was, I would say, my first conference. I felt as if I was alone, that why am I short-staffed during COVID, of course, that hit everyone. So making those connections allowed me to know that I'm not in it. I'm not the only one that's going through those struggles or those difficult moments at the offices. So make sure that you, I would say, just take advantage of networking, of connecting, and also be empowered. Be empowered going back to your organizations and being just ready to be game changers. I would say, speaking to what Alyssa said, be a champion or find a champion within your organization. There are a lot of people that, just in doing this, that I got to talk to with AAOE that I probably wouldn't have before. Our organization is actually lucky to have a big AAOE champion and an advocate who may or may not be in the room. But she's the reason that we're all here. Would we have been here? Maybe you're not, who knows? But we make it a point to come and bring more people. Those of you that are here for the first time and here alone, next year, try to find somebody to bring with you and let that person learn from you with this being your first year. And can I add one thing too? There are many committees as well within. So you mentioned the Advocacy Committee. I'm on New and Young Professionals. I age out this year, but I'm still on the committee this year. But, and also the Membership Council. I know Justin's on the Membership Council as well. Are you on the Membership Council? We're all on the Membership Council. I'm an ex-member. We're here. So don't be afraid to, there are signups, I think at the main kind of AAOE booth, but you'll hear from us. We have like, well, my tags are gone. I had my tags. So I have to get new tags. But if you see someone with the little tags kind of hanging from the badge, don't be afraid to hop on it. It's a call maybe once a month, once every other month. For some committees, not a heavy lift. Others are a lot more involved. So stop by, swing by the Hive, because we're on all different committees kind of have little times that they're there. So don't be afraid to just kind of jump in and listen. And then as you get more involved, you'll build those relationships. Yeah, and I'm just gonna, again, piggyback that, get involved. The more, if you're more reserved or quiet or nervous and shy, that's the best way to break that comfort zone is to get involved. And you can get involved as in little ways of joining the committee. So again, we have advocacy, we have an education council. So that's, you know, helping with webinars and different programs, and the courses that we offer, that one, the young and new professionals. So that is new to, you know, your kind of position and also, you know, are under 40. So those are the requirements for that. I ate out of that. Then there's also, like I said, the membership committees, how do we get members? How do we keep them engaged? How do we, you know, empower them? There's also the conference council. And that is, again, you know, coming together to make this and being a decision maker and, you know, where are we gonna go next? What are we gonna offer? Who's gonna be our keynotes? All those fun things. So again, these are some of the really good ways of getting involved. You know, you don't have to do a whole lot. Sometimes it may just be, you know, writing like two or three sentences. Sometimes it is doing a testimonial, some, you know, or writing a blog post. But even if you don't wanna commit to a committee, you know, there's a lot of ways that you can just get involved in some of these other aspects of just getting your name out there, connecting with somebody else. So again, we wanna say thank you so much. Don't be afraid to ask any of us any questions or anyone with a different color badge and make sure you check out if you've already checked in. The AAPC credit, has anyone applied for AAPC? Well, I won't say that one then. The checkout code is 478745. Again, 478745. Use your app. That's a great resource. You can connect with people there. The check-in code, sure, I'll repeat that again. We'll get you the AAPC code too. Is 246457. Oh, did I miss? All right, thank you guys so much. Thank you.
Video Summary
The speakers, Justin, Rochelle, Lindsay, provided insights on their experiences with the AAOE and attending the annual conference. Justin, a new member, highlighted the benefits of using the Collaborate platform for networking and knowledge sharing. Rochelle emphasized the importance of building relationships and taking advantage of relevant sessions to improve workflows. Lindsay discussed educational opportunities like the Practice Management Courses and encouraged members to engage with others and share expertise. They also touched on the significance of the benchmarking survey for valuable data insights. The importance of getting involved in committees, such as advocacy and educational councils, was stressed to maximize membership benefits. The speakers recommended networking, seeking mentorship, and taking advantage of the resources and connections available within AAOE for professional growth.
Keywords
AAOE
Collaborate platform
networking
workflow improvement
educational opportunities
mentorship
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